The future of an iconic city centre pub is in doubt after its owners put it up for sale, it can be revealed.

Pub giant JD Wetherspoon is understood to have told staff at The Union Rooms, close to Newcastle’s Central Station, that the venue is to be put up for sale on Thursday - just months after it was bought by the chain. The shock announcement came within the past 24 hours and assurances have been given to workers that there will be no job losses with the sale.

Staff are said to have been told that if the venue, which was the first Wetherspoon to open in the city, is sold to another pub chain there is the possibility of being kept on with the new owner.

If it is sold for another leisure, retail or residential purpose, job transfers will be offered.

We can reveal that the sale is one of 45 across the country, although it is the only Wetherspoon being flogged in the North East.

The news comes just five months after the pub juggernaut - which has over 900 venues nationwide and five in Newcastle city centre - bought the building for £5.6m.

Its sale was one of the largest deals in the city centre last year, beating the £2.95m paid for office building Collingwood House in July. Although Wetherspoon bosses are remaining tight-lipped about the latest development, at the time of the sale a spokesman said: “The company has been able to buy the freehold which highlights our commitment to the venue.

“It was our first pub in Newcastle and it’s as popular now as it ever was.”

The asking price for the building is not yet known but a multi-million pound price tag is expected.

Wetherspoon is set to officially put the building on the market on Thursday afternoon, although the company declined to comment when contacted.

The five-storey property, at the bottom of Westgate Road, dates back to 1877 and was a gentlemen’s club called the Union Club for almost 100 years.

Probably its most famous member was WG - later Lord - Armstrong, the 19th century Tyneside engineer and industrialist.

The Victorian building sat in a row of three - flanked by Kemsley House and the Norwich Union Insurance building. Today only The Union Rooms remains, with The Chronicle’s old headquarters Kemsley House vacated in 1965 when we moved to our current offices in the Groat Market.

It was then bulldozed to make way for Westgate House, which was completely incongruous and unsympathetic to its surroundings.

The old Norwich Union building is also long-gone, replaced by the faceless Norwich Union House.